Lurker > Kenri

"It's not even a chore to play; it's worse than that." *ranks it above like 100 other games*

Definitely heard of Data East though it might just be because of these videos lol

I dunno that version of Rampage truly looked like dogshit. ...I should play Rampage on the GBC and see if it's also really bad or if my memory of it being pretty fun is accurate.

This series is really showing me that there are tons of NES games I know nothing about. The segue from "I've made a list of big-name games that people know about, games that can carry an episode" to "here's today's game people know: Karnov!" gave me whiplash. I've never even heard of Karnov!

I think it's so weird that the Sesame Street/Fischer Price games keep avoiding the bottom of the list when they're like. Nothing. There's no game there. I'd rather play Athena for sure.

Watching now and practically crying from laughing so much at Operation Secret Storm. Between the music and animations, what the fuck is this game

Yeah Dr. Mario is a premiere puzzle game, but I get the feeling it might be difficult if you're color blind? At least that would be my excuse if I was playing the way he was.

HANA Playtime Clocks is the crossover we need but not the one we deserve

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Uh trickle I believe you mean mer-toys to mer-kids at mer-Christmas.

christmers

Thanks for doing this! I'd have followed along with the writeups and submitted guesses even without the monetary prizes, but the prizes definitely made it more engaging. Definitely one of the most fun topics B8 has had in a while!

I actually was doing research and it didn't help as much as one might think. I mean I got a couple weird ones I wouldn't have otherwise but mostly my 2 wins were a combination of just knowing a lot of video games and being lucky.

there goes bracket

3/6 so far!

the sad thing is that i knew FFXIV would make an appearance, i just didn't connect it with that clue at all

MacArrowny posted...

#6 is obvious once you realize what it is haha.

I will say that I found a game that 100% fits the clue but I'm like 99% sure is wrong!

Before Your Eyes felt like a wild top 10 pull but so far overthinking the clues has not been helpful, so I just went with it. Never would have gotten Outer Wilds either way tbh.

Googling parts of clue #8 kept weirdly leading me towards Omori as the answer (safety spoilers but I don't think this actually spoils anything? I haven't played the game though) but that answer just felt wrong. Then I was like "wait is it Sekiro" and that almost fits the clue but just didn't fit quite well enough. I forget how I got to DMC3 but it was an "oh, DUH" moment.

I guess I can say now that clue #6 is the one I'm completely stumped by.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Is it a hot take that Rygar sucks? I think Rygar sucks and I have no idea why he likes it so much lol

The top of his list would make sense to me otherwise but hey we've all got our personal faves

I haven't played it myself but he definitely played it in a way that made it look like a fucking awful game.

MZero posted...

I feel pretty good about 8 of them. Well, 5 because I have no idea on the order of Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring

I have a theory there but I'm prepared to be wrong.

The ambition of HANA combined with the artistic merit of The Botanist... game of the year, certainly. If it can be done.

One of these clues is absolutely killing me but I'm going to submit soon even if it doesn't magically come to me

slitherlink police department

I love Metal Gear Rising because it has these absurd villainous caricatures who scream about how much they fucking love war and then you read some 20th century American history and you're just like "oh never mind this is just what people from the CIA and the state department are like"

Johnbobb posted...

Since this countdown ended I've played:

A Short Hike - very short, extremely cute, and a very pleasant time

Slay the Spire - This one was interesting, but didn't quite click with me, which is surprising as I'm a big fan of deck builders. I've done about 4 runs so far, but any time I've gone back to the beginning I haven't really felt all that compelled to start up again. Meanwhile one of my closest friends said she put like 200+ hours in this year, which just feels wild to me

I put like 150 hours into Slay the Spire and I feel like I still don't really understand the mechanics of most of the characters lol

The hint is that immediately giving away an answer is a thing that happens in Radiant Dawn, when a character just randomly tells you the identity of the Black Knight.

Unless that hint was unintentional, in which case it's even funnier.

KamikazePotato posted...

Hint:
17. A strategy game duology. Can't think of anything else that wouldn't immediately give away the answer, so that's all you get. No, that last sentence wasn't a secret hint, and neither is this one.

The secret hint here was pretty clever btw, I figured it out just yesterday and it was killing me to not post about it.

Also yay, and congrats to the other two winners!

There's something very specific wrong with my brain because my takeaway is "I want to play HANA Spacetime Fantasy"

Leonhart4 posted...

They're still generally better at it than, say, anime/manga.

I haven't watched/read very much anime/manga by comparison but I think this is actually a relative strength they have compared to other media. I can easily name 10 anime that I really liked the ending of and that's hard for me to do with... anything else...

If you're an "endings matter" person then oh man are video games not the right media for you

I've always liked Vesperia more as a character piece than for its plot per se, though the plot has its moments too. That said, last time I tried to replay it I didn't get past the (extremely slow) first couple hours, so who knows how I'd feel about it now.

Your Berseria write-up is pretty much exactly how I felt about Vesperia. I should probably get around to Berseria someday but man, it's hard to invest time in long RPGs (or any genre really) these days.

Yeah it's pretty obviously not you but for a moment I was fooled.

A lot of the youtube results when searching your username are actually reviews of your books, which is neat.

KamikazePotato posted...

22. An RPG where the main character is not its strongest representative in GameFAQs contests.

Answers:
Final Fantasy IX 5
Final Fantasy VI 4

A battle of two Final Fantasies, with the consensus narrowly guessing correctly.

lmao I forgot all about FFIX here. I've got eternal 2006 contest brain.

KamikazePotato posted...

29. A 2D indie action game duology. I loved them enough to upload several gameplay videos to youtube.

Answers:
Bleed 2
Hotline Miami 2
Ori and the Blind Forest / Will O' the Wisps 2
Spelunky 1
Shovel Knight 1

I'm honestly curious about the people who got this one right. Did they remember me talking about Bleed years ago? Did they track down my dormant youtube channel? Did they hunt through Steam's catalog and go for an obscure pick? All valid options!

Shout out to this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiamondman85 it almost had me answering Rebel Galaxy or Roblox

Surskit posted...

Dig Dug 2 is super fun, he didn't even try to play it before getting himself killed and quitting. I can't understand what he found so frustrating or offensive about it lol

Yeah I can't speak to the game's quality but spending 4 minutes on it and then going "this shit sucks" and quitting was pretty bizarre considering how many absolutely awful games he's spent 40+ minutes on.

Gonna try to get some guesses in ahead of the deadline but it'll be close

Kid Icarus' difficulty curve is just a slide lol, if you can beat world 1 you can beat the whole game no problem

Cassette Beasts is A+++, would listen to the soundtrack on repeat and cry again

The second biggest issue with Iconoclasts is that it's erroneously called a metroidvania when it barely qualifies as one.

The biggest issue is that the writing is awful (and yet very, very prominent).

But some people love it so don't take my word for it!

azuarc posted...

Wow, somebody actually beat me to recommending Lenna's. =p

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure I played it because of you hyping it up!

I definitely liked the combat of Rogue Legacy way more than... several other rogue-likes I can think of!

Johnbobb posted...

I bought the 1800 game itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice a couple years ago and played like 3 of them so I have so many unplayed games

I didn't think I was going to have much to recommend, but since you own it already, you should play Lenna's Inception. It's basically Link to the Past by way of Undertale and it is so good.

...Also A Short Hike is in that bundle and it's good (and short). Kind of a mini-metroidvania? 3D low-difficulty Celeste? I dunno, it's hard to describe.

......Also also Highway Blossoms, but that's a tougher sell since it's just a cute VN

I don't mean this in a bad way but that's an insane #1, I would not have guessed that with a hundred guesses lol

Thanks for writing all this! I had a ton of fun reading along.

I mentioned this earlier in the topic, but it remains true: it's crazy how few games on this list I've played, even though I've probably played around 250 indie games (I know I've beaten ~200). I added up everything and I've only played 43 of the 214 games you covered here!

Edith Finch is another of those games I wish I could like more. I love any game where you explore a big house and I thought the game started super strong with Molly's story, but by the end I was no longer invested at all. One of those stories where the parts I thought were compelling are not what ended up being focused on. And then it ended with one of my least favorite plot devices, so my parting thoughts were more like "fuck this game" than a (probably more accurate) "well, it wasn't for me overall but I still enjoyed most of it"

Thinking about it more, Transistor and Stardew Valley haven't shown up yet and feel like notable omissions.

Cadence of Hyrule is better anyway (at least if, like me, you can't keep a beat to save your life)

Johnbobb posted...

The limited communication is genius; you only have the bare minimum way to interact with your companion, and yet I felt closer to them than I have with pretty much anyone else playing online, to the point that when they started to draw hearts in the snow at the summit before we were forced to depart, it legitimately made me tear up a bit.

Aww, this is really cute!

I'm not sure what to expect for your top 3! I feel like most of the greatest hits have been covered already, so maybe it's something kinda obscure.

Some short and free VN clean-up:

I Told You So! (Steam)

This is a series of four dubcanon vignettes featuring the characters and in-universe podcast from The Heart of the Woods. I'm not sure it's actually worth playing on its own merits, but I love these characters and it was nice to see them again.

missed messages. (Steam)

A slightly time loop VN about connecting with people during college. Relatable characters. Has very pretty art and music, and the writing feels natural despite (because of?) leaning on a lot of millennial slang. Pay attention to the trigger warnings before playing.

The Waters Above: Prelude (Steam)

A mystery VN about lesbian sea nymphs, set in a heavenly ocean. The main project has been unfortunately canceled, leaving only this prologue behind. It's a shame because I want more of these characters and their stories, but there's value even in creative projects that don't get a real ending. As with abandoned webcomics, fanfiction, etc: you gotta think about it as the journey, not the destination.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Hes played Kid Icarus before in his life, pretty sure he knows about the other level types

He said he completely forgot about that when chat brought it up

Fearmonium (Steam)

If I had a nickel for every metroidvania I've played about living with your abusive dad, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

Weird plot choices aside this game is pretty good. It's so, so close to being great but just needs more polish, particularly on the controls and character movement. e.g. this game has possibly the worst slide I have ever seen in a side-scroller. it is so bad. A lot of the art is also really bad, which is a shame because some of the art is really good too.

also can we talk about how "fearmonium" means nothing? Pandemonium is pan- (all/every) plus daimonion (demon), in other words "(the city with) all the demons" which then came to be used metaphorically as a word for something as chaotic as that fictional city would be. A play on this should be like "Panphobium" but that also sounds really stupid so maybe it should just be titled something else entirely.

KamikazePotato posted...

This isn't a comparable glitch, but when I first played Alien Isolation,

Caught standing on the banister is what sells it for me.

Cat behavior.

I remember Papo & Yo being kind of a big deal when it first came out, and then it dropped off the face of the earth almost immediately. Yet another game I should really get around to playing.

My most surprising Subnautica moment was when, right after getting the big quest from the Leviathan Queen, I turned around and started swimming away and was immediately attacked by a leviathan. I was like "wtf did she aggro on me for... some reason?" and then realized that, no, right after giving you the quest she opens a portal, and a wild leviathan on the other side of that portal swam through instantly and immediately started blasting.

Honestly that whole area was super bugged in my game for some reason so it might have had to do with that, idk if it can happen normally.

KamikazePotato posted...

One of the scariest horror games ever created, even thought it (initially) wasn't really advertised that way.

I think I love scuba sims (and the ocean in general) too much to be able to see Subnautica as a horror game. Any time I ran into a leviathan I was just like "oh what a gentle giant :3 it's more scared of me than i am of it"

KamikazePotato posted...

31. Pyre

I really need to play this, considering I love Supergiant's other 3 games.

Kid Icarus got robbed. I guess it's understandable to get turned off by how unforgiving the first couple levels are though.